America's Funniest Home Videos

This is too funny and too cute to not get its own post. Sloan and I went to visit my friend Cecilia who has a little dog named Sophie. This was Sloan's first real experience up close and personal to a dog...what comes next is pretty awesome. I cannot stop watching!

2 Month Check In

Today is Sloan's two months mark...Sloan and I (Kerri) celebrated by going to a breastfeeding/new mom's group up at NYU Medical Center. It's a pretty great thing to have - not only is it a great excuse to make yourself get out of the house (I'm being braver about taking her outside), but the camaraderie can't be beat. Today there was a a 6 day old baby there, but outside of that Sloan is still the smallest baby...she's also the prettiest & most awesome, but I digress. 

Some quick 2 month stats from our Dr appointment last week (the % are adjusted for her 32 week gestation):
Head: I think she said 10 cm? (~35th %)
Body: 19 1/4 (50th%)
Weight: 6lbs, 1oz on Wednesday (10th%) and today we were closer to 6lbs, 6oz!

Yeah! I'm 2 months old!

This picture is cute and all...but two quick things to point out about it. First, it only looks like an easy picture to take. She is so small, floppy and upset in the 1 month picture that its not worth posing. And here is tonight's first attempt at taking the 2 month photo: 

FEED ME NOW! 

And finally, my favorite part of the night. I came into the living room to my two favorite people just like this on the couch:

 I mean, seriously, does it get any cuter?!!?!

Special Delivery for the Loudis Family...

OMG! There is a baby in our apartment!! Now what?!!

There were about 12 hours Yesterday where we weren't sure if she would come home today or not. She had a brady yesterday while I was nursing her, and another quick one (3 seconds) this morning during her feed. The Dr's were not concerned since it was during a feed (the most common time because there is so much coordination involved). Her caffeine results came back at a 3...so she is now a graduate of the NYU Hospital NICU!!

Ready to go! 

We signed the discharge papers, dressed her in baby clothes and packed up all of Sloan's belongings around 12:30pm today. It was so much harder to say good bye to the nurses than we thought it would be. They have all been so wonderful to us and given our baby girl such excellent (and loving) care. They won't ever read this, but for posterity sake - a big Thank You to Dr Howell and the day nurses Kayla, Margot, Ruth who took our first family photo, Amal who has given hours of advice, and Laura & Leista who discharged us. And to the night nurses, Carolyn, Rowena who showed us how to bathe her, DeAnna who first helped mom bond with her, Ingrid the Physician's Assistant with the cat glasses, and finally Lillian who loved Sloan so much she asked if she could take a picture of her for herself. We'll forever be grateful for the loving care and countless hours of kangaroo time!

After a quick, but emotional good-bye we were off for our first cab ride...then a tour around her new New York City home! It's been quite the journey; the quickest yet tormentingly slow 33 days we've lived through. We've been so blessed throughout all of it, even more so now that our story has a happy ending (though this is really only the beginning!). Thank you to everyone for all the kind words and, most importantly, prayers. We would not have made it through this trying time without our family's & friend's support. Our perfect little angel is home!!!

In my first non-hospital clothes! 

Our last photo in the NICU

Look how little I am! 

Good-bye Tisch Hospital and your long elevator lines

Konked out in the cab

48 HOURS?!!?!

If you've read the latest update, you know that we are making steady progress in several key areas. Well, I walked into the NICU yesterday and they had a few surprises for me...First, they moved Sloan into a new home! She is now in a bassinet!

I love my new home! 

Second, the nurse said something to the effect of "now they are looking for 48 hours of good feeds". I thought, 'oh that is good, we'll see if she's really learned how to eat well'...then the nurse added "then she can go home". 

SAY WHAT?!!?!?!!! 

That's right - Sloan has to give us 48 hours of good feeds (all from the bottle or mom) and then she is free to come home! Dad was there tonight when they took out her feeding tube tonight. Here is the first shot of a tube-free Sloan Loudis!!

Let the 48 hour countdown begin...

Videos for your enjoyment...

Just posting a few videos we have taken the past few days. They help show how tiny Little Miss Sloan is. She weighed in at 1480 grams today, so down 10 grams. They assure us the fluctuation is normal - I'm sure she'll be back up tomorrow. She did get her IV out today, which means the only tube left is the feeding tube. Everything else is just a few leads to monitor heart rate or body temperature (which I'm told she is very good at already). She is still on a maintenance dose of caffeine too. Not sure how long that continues, but it helps with the bradys so we're all for it.

Video from Barry's first kangaroo time:

And another quick one taken as we put her back in her little home yesterday - she was so alert!

Introducing Sloan Yates Loudis

Baby Girl "BG" Loudis (formerly known as Warby) came into this world on Wednesday, August 15th at 10:04am, and weighed in at 3lbs, 1oz. She surprised her parents with her early arrival, but she apparently had somewhere to be - and quick! The rumor is that she wanted to make sure she didn't miss any football games...

Snug as a bug in a rug

For a 32 week old preemie, she was surprisingly strong. She came out able to breathe on her own, and some of the NICU nurses said her sucking abilities looked more like a 34 week old baby. Apparently she is already acting older than her age...  She is a feisty little thing and is always squirming around in her incubator. Arms flailing around and legs sprawled out across her little nest of a home. There was a time when they had a nose cannula to help with oxygen, but she kept messing with it and that experiment was over.

From the beginning they inserted a feeding tube into her mouth. They started with about 5ml of food, but quickly learned it was too much so they dropped her to 4ml and established a good starting point. Her intake has increased 2 ml every 12 hours since and as of this blog posting she should be at about 20 ml per feeding. They feed her each day at 1, 4, 7 & 10 - both am & pm. The feeds take about 2 hours to go through, she digests for an hour, and then they do it all again. As of Sunday they moved the feeding tube to her nose because those flailing arms would pull it out. Mom & Dad think she looks better with the tube in her nose anyway.

Reaching for the tubes

As is the case with a lot of preemies, her bilirubin levels were high so by Friday they had her under the lights to help prevent jaundice. She got to come out briefly on Sunday & Monday, but her levels have risen again and she is back to getting a suntan. This is a fairly common problem to have and we're told levels typically subside 7-10 days after birth.

Under the lights. Note the sprawling arms & legs

The biggest medical hurdle so far have been 'bradys' (short for bradycardia). These are episodes where the heart rate drops below a certain number (100 in our case). Between weeks 32-34 is when babies develop the ability to breathe, suck and swallow at the same time. If this coordination isn't quite perfected yet, the breathing will become really shallow and the heart rate drops. Each of these episodes only lasts a few seconds and they're typically brought out of them by a little jostle or stimulation. On Friday, BG Loudis had 16 of these episodes. The doctors were really alarmed at this number so they first dropped her feed amount. The bradys continued, though not as often, so they decided to give her caffeine on Saturday evening. She ended up with 10 bradys on Saturday. By Sunday the number dropped to 4, and on Monday there was only one. Tuesday was our first brady-free day, so we have made significant progress. However, we aren't out of the woods yet - there was one brady today (Wednesday) but it only lasted a few seconds and she brought herself out of it.

Cuteness

Once she has proven she is over the bradys, she'll become what is known as a "feeder & grower". This just means that she has to get bigger and stronger. By Tuesday night she reached her birth weight again (roughly 1400 grams). The next milestone is around 1700-1800 grams. This is when she'll be big enough to start regulating her body temperature. Once she can do that, her brady spells are gone, and she is at least 1800 grams she can come home! 1800 grams is only a rough estimate though - they've done all sorts of precautionary tests to make sure nothing else is causing her size issue, but they've all come back normal. She is likely just a really small baby, so they may want her to be just a bit more than 1800 grams.

Now on to the more fun and less medical stuff. It took us until Sunday, but we finally named our sweet little Warby: Sloan Yates Loudis. You have to understand that we had a list of about 9 names when she was born. Our plan was to go to dinner for Barry's birthday (Sept 4) and narrow down our list to a Top 3, take those to the hospital with us and then decide. That obviously did not happen, so while I was in my drug-induced haze we narrowed it down to a Top 5, and by late Saturday we had a Top 2 - Greer or Sloan.  He came back to the hospital on Sunday morning, said he had slept on it, and felt like Sloan should be the winner. After doing a little research, we learned that Sloan means "warrior", and after the fight she has shown us already, how can you argue with that? It was very important to me to honor my paternal grandmother who passed away just last December, so we gave her the middle name Yates, which was MawMaw's maiden name. She is now officially Sloan Yates Loudis, but rest assured she will still answer to Warby - and Mom and Dad are definitely guilty of still calling her that every once in a while.

Our final list of names - it stared at Mom for days in the hospital bed

Finally, our current status... Mom & Dad go visit Sloan at least twice a day. Typically one of these visits will consist of "Kangaroo Care" time - basically skin on skin time for at least an hour. The first session was a huge hit on Sunday night and our little Baby Girl began to sleep much more peacefully afterwards. Mom likes to go in the mornings for the 10am feeding and sit for as long as two hours. Dad finally got to do his first session last night and thought it was pretty awesome. Sloan had the hiccups for the first ten minutes or so, then spent the second ten minutes squirming around on his chest trying to find a nipple - we finally gave her a binky and she settled down quickly. Each night when we go back, whether we are kangaroo'ing or just saying Good Night, we are reading her a book. The first night was "On the Night You Were Born", then it was "Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?" and finally "The Going To Bed Book". Tonight's selection is "Does A Kangaroo Have A Mother, Too?".

Mom and Kangaroo Time 

Dad and Kangaroo Time

Vegetarians Not Welcome

There are quite a few annual events we look forward to here in New York City, but this past weekend was one of the most important: The Big Apple BBQ Festival. You've seen enough food shots on this blog to know we do not take feeding ourselves lightly, and the level of intensity increases when meat, smokers and BBQ sauce are involved. This year was the 10th annual celebration of the festival and it did not disappoint! For those that aren't aware, every year for two days Madison Square Park becomes a haven for renowned BBQ Pitmasters. They are set up along several blocks of Madison Avenue and 27th Street. Their rigs arrive on Friday night and begin to fill the air with hickory-tinged smoke. By Saturday morning, the pigs are good and cooked...the meat ripe for the pickin'.

Our process of attack has been thoroughly tested and perfected throughout the years - it starts several months in advance with the purchase of what is called a Fast Pass. The Fast Pass is the key to success. For $125 you get a 'punch card' with $100 worth of money on it and a companion pass. These allow you access to the 'inner' lines - while the commoners (who obviously lack foresight and real passion for BBQ) must wait in the outside lines. The Fast Pass lines typically move faster, but make no mistake they, too, can get outrageously long at the best rigs (Big Bob Gibson's from Birmingham is routinely upwards of 1 hour wait). Each year, we set up camp around 10:30/10:45 in the morning, and spread our blankets out on the same grassy spot each year. After plotting who to hit up first, everyone is off to the races. Martin's BBQ from TN, Ubon's of Mississippi, Jim n Nick's of AL, Jack's Old South from GA, the list goes on...

Our group varies in size from 10-20 folks throughout the day, so we'll often get in line for a particular vendor and bring back several plates for the group. For example, our friends Lindsay and Johnny took one for the team this year and stood in that crazy Big Bob's line. A well-timed "Roll Tide" got them a plate of pulled pork while they waited in line,  and they returned with 3 sandwiches back for the group. But Randy & Heath really outdid themselves by standing in the Fried Pie line that stretched two blocks, they ordered 16 fried pies at once - 4 each of peach, apple, cherry & blackberry. A friend of mine from HS was in town visiting (hi Tara!), and I'm pretty certain she was blown away by the crowds of people and what a big ordeal this whole event is. It really is truly an amazing spectacle. Day 2 was a quick stop to round out whatever you couldn't fit in your belly the first day. The goal is simply to finish all the punches in your Fast Pass. Whatever you don't spend in BBQ you can buy in rubs, spices and other merchandise. Then everybody goes home and sleeps off the meat coma...

Cowboys & Indians...and Aliens? Part 2

Outside of surfing, eating and of course the premiere itself, our other adventure in San Diego involved animals. Lots and lots of animals. Anyone that has met Heath knows he is a rather poised bloke. Don't get me wrong, he loves his fair share of BBQ, bourbon and belly laughs, but I am constantly amazed at what he finds entertaining. Case in point? He got an absolute kick out of the Shamu Show at Sea World. A 3 ton killer whale that waves on command and helps tell corny jokes, he loved it. He also enjoyed the swords, Jen on the other hand didn't enjoy the swords so much and would rather stick with the turtles. Barry and I liked the penguins.



Saturday's animal adventure was even better - the San Diego Zoo. If you've never been, I highly suggest you go. It is so well done - the environment, the animals, the atmosphere, everything. However, a word to the wise get there when it opens and hit the pandas and polar bears first.



Through our visits to Sea World & the Zoo, there was one animal that eluded us. The famed, Lil' Sebastian.



So, without further ado, possibly the best thing to potentially ever happen to anyone, anywhere, in the history of the universe. I present to you, Lil' Sebastian:

Well Done!